I will only add, that what I refer to has long been known to almost every scholar except English ones. Of these a few are learned; but for a long period they have systematically refrained from speaking plainly, and have written in such a manner as to be guilty not only of suppressio veri but of suggestio falsi.
After reading thus far, I can imagine many a person saying with astonishment, "Are these things so?" and following up his thoughts by wondering what style of persons they were, or are, who could introduce into religion such matters as those of which we have treated.
In reply, I can only say that I have nothing extenuated, and set down nought in malice. But the first clause of the assertion requires modification, for in this volume there are many things omitted which I have referred to at length in my larger work. In that I have shown, not only that religious fornication existed in ancient Babylon, but that there is reason to believe that it existed also in Palestine. The word [—Hebrew—] Kadesh, which signifies "pure, bright, young, to be holy, or to be consecrated," is also the root from which are formed the words Kadeshah and Kadeshim, which are used in the Hebrew writings, and are translated in our authorised version "whore" and "sodomite." See Bent, xxiii. 17.
Athanasius tells us something of this as regards the Phoenicians, for he says, (Oratio Contr. Gent., part i., p. 24.) "Formerly, it is certain that Phoenician women prostituted themselves before their idols, offering their bodies to their gods in the place of first fruits, being persuaded that they pleased the goddess by that means, and made her propitious to them."
Strabo mentions a similar occurrence at Comana, in Pontus, book xiii., c. iii. p. 86—and notices that an enormous number of women were consecrated to the use of worshippers in the temple of Venus at Corinth.
Such women exist in India, and the priests of certain temples do everything in their power to select the loveliest of the sex, and to educate them so highly as to be attractive.
The customs which existed in other places seem to have been known in Jerusalem, as we find in 1 Kings xiv. 24., XV. 12, that Kadeshim were common in Judea, and in 2 Kings xxiii. 7, we discover that these "consecrated ones" were located "by the temple," and were associated with women whose business was "to make hangings for the grove." What these tissues were and what use was made of them will be seen in Ezekiel xvi. 16.
Even David, when dancing before the ark, shamelessly exposed himself. Solomon erected two pillars in the porch of his temple, and called them Jachin and Boaz, and added pomegranate ornaments. We have seen how Abraham and Jacob ordered their inferiors to swear by putting the hand upon "the thigh"; and we have read of the atrocities which occurred in Jerusalem in the time of Ezekiel. Yet the Jews are still spoken of as God's chosen people, and the Psalmist as a man after God's own heart.
But without going so far back, let us inquire into the conduct of the sensual Turks, and of the general run of the inhabitants of Hindostan. From everything that I can learn—and I have repeatedly conversed with those who have known the Turks and Hindoos familiarly—these are in every position in life as morally good as common Christians are.
My readers must not now assert that I am either a partisan or a special pleader when I say this; they must consider that I am making the comparison as man by man. I do not, as missionaries do, compare the most vicious Mahomedan and Brahmin with the most exemplary Christian; nor do I, on the other hand, compare the best Ottoman and Indian with Christian criminals; but I take the whole in a mass, and assert that there is as large a percentage of good folks in India and Turkey as there is in Spain and France, England or America.